Today Is The 10th Anniversary Of Charlie Murphy’s Prince Sketch From ‘Chappelle’s Show’

Last week while I was clicking my way around the Internet to verify that February 11, 2014 was, in fact, the 10th anniversary of the Rick James sketch from Chappelle’s Show, I noticed something that must have slipped my mind at some point over the last decade: The two “Charlie Murphy’s True Hollywood Stories” sketches aired in back-to-back episodes. This means that today, February 18, 2014, seven days after the 10th anniversary of the Rick James sketch, is the 10th anniversary of the second one, featuring Dave Chappelle as Prince. And the next two weeks after that featured the first two “WHAT?”/”YEAH” Lil Jon sketches. This is kind of insane to think about now. Season 2 of Chappelle’s Show was a goddamn powerhouse. Never forget that.

As far as the Prince sketch itself goes, yup, still perfect. The Legend of Prince has grown a little bit since 2004 (thanks to both the Internet and this very sketch), so maybe the idea of a tiny purple-clad musical genius from Minnesota serving pancakes to a group of men he just vanquished on his personal fog-filled basketball court doesn’t fill you with quite the same amount of joy as it did the first time around. If this is the case, I’m begging you, try to watch the clip again with fresh eyes. You won’t regret it. I promise.

That first crossover move, when he just faked out Charlie and went to the hoop – that just killed me at the time – so unexpected. Seriously, Chappelle should have won an Emmy that year just for this and the Rick James sketch. Genius stuff.